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Do your kids eat the food you send with them every day for lunch? Thanks to litterless or "boomerang" policies at schools, everything comes home so parents now know.

Nutritionist Lianne Phillipson-Webb and her daughters, 8-year-old Logan, left, and Hadley, 6, help make and plan their own school lunches most days of the week. Here they're assembling rice-paper wraps. (ANDREW FRANCIS WALLACE / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

Grade 2 student Thavachselvi Anisthin, 7, eats in her classroom during lunch break at Roberta Bondar Public School in Brampton. The school designates Tuesdays as "litterless lunch" days, so kids bring their lunch in reusable containers and water bottles. (BERNARD WEIL / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

By Kristin RushowyEducation Reporter

Mon., Sept. 10, 2012

Do your kids really eat all the veggies you stay up late chopping and preparing, or are they only gobbling down the goodies in their lunch box? What about the fruit or other healthy snacks you pack?

It’s getting easier for parents to figure out what their children actually like, thanks to eco-initiatives like litterless or “boomerang” lunches that have not only drastically cut the amount of garbage at school, but also have the added benefit of giving mom and dad a glimpse into what their kids consume.

“Everything comes home — even the half-eaten lunch or apple sauce if (my daughter) has taken that, and it’s all over the inside of her lunch box,” laughs Toronto mom Lianne Phillipson-Webb, a nutritionist and founder of Sprout Right, which helps educate parents-to-be and families about healthy eating.

“With the school not having to dispose of all this stuff . . . we know what she’s eaten and what she hasn’t. It’s feedback for us, we know what didn’t work and what did . . . and if she’s going through a growth spurt and eating everything, we know to send more.

“You get to see a little bit about what’s going on.”

Schools across the province have been implementing litterless lunch programs as they work toward being more environmentally friendly. Some try for it daily, but many designate at least one day a week where kids are encouraged to bring their food and snacks in reusable containers.

Other schools have implemented “boomerang” policies — meaning anything kids bring to school in their lunch box goes home.

The Halton Catholic board prefers litterless meals but says when kids do bring in food with wrappers or juice boxes, they aren’t sent to landfills but rather “up-cycled” — donated to companies that use them to make new products.

“We do not encourage ‘boomerang’ lunches as this practice only encourages the displacement of waste from the school to the home as opposed to the reduction of waste,” says Erin Wilson, the board’s environmental sustainability officer.

(Many Halton schools also have water-filling stations for reusable water bottles, discouraging the use of plastic bottles or juice boxes.)

“I’ve learned lots of lessons,” she said, and one is key: “Now I really have them completely involved in the whole thing, from planning, coming up with ideas, to actually making their own lunch” most days of the week.

Mom takes over on Fridays, and “even then when I’m making lunch, I’ve learned what works and how much to push — and when I push too much then it just comes home again.”

Logan likes leftovers, and will nosh on lasagna or soup; Hadley loves muffins, so they’ll make carrot muffins and send along cheese cubes. Both girls love sliced peppers, and take them every day.

“Logan’s favourite is green; I also buy red and yellow and change it up,” says mom. She’ll also suggest sugar-snap peas or if stuck, she’ll put a container of frozen peas in their lunch, which will thaw by noon.

Sugary treats are few and far between, though the girls do take part in the school’s pizza lunch once a month.

“Having the girls involved, it makes it more interesting, and honestly I think that is the key to success,” says Phillipson-Webb.

Joan Hamilton, principal of Brampton’s Roberta Bondar elementary school — which is on an alternative calendar so kids have been back in class for four weeks now — has designated Tuesdays as a boomerang/litterless lunch day. She hopes to expand the program to more days.

Hamilton is working on a plan that would have older students wear a “zero hero” costume and use garbage cans as drums, to “drum up” awareness and interest in the program. With a student body of 850 — and most of them staying for lunch — it’s a must to reduce waste.

The litterless lunch is a great opportunity to promote healthy eating, says Judy Gould, waste and energy officer at the Durham District School Board.

Rather than buying prepackaged foods like Lunchables or cheese strings, she suggests parents purchase cheese and crackers in bulk and send them in a reusable container. It not only cuts down on food packaging, it’s also more economical.

“It just makes so much more sense,” she added.

With reusable containers, if kids can’t finish a snack at recess or something at lunch, “they can close it up, and eat it later” and it won’t get squished or ruined in their backpack.

To promote reusable water bottles, every Durham school has a filling station with a counter, “so they can see how many water bottles they are diverting from the waste stream.”

Larry Tadman, controller of environmental services for York Region’s Catholic school board, makes presentations at schools talk about reducing waste, and has a kit with different examples of garbage-free lunch products.

While some York Catholic schools do have compost programs, all families have green bins at home so the food waste isn’t simply going into anyone’s garbage.

For Toronto dad Ashoke Roy, his family has struggled through school lunches, and experienced it all — his now 9-year-old daughter has stayed at school for lunch, come home, and will now be back at school all day.

He found much of it went uneaten, in part because the lunchroom was overcrowded, and the lunch period was short.

For now, his goal is simple: “We hope this year she will finish her lunch,” he said.

Lunch Lessons

Keep it cool: “The thing to take into account is safety and temperature control,” says Ryerson nutrition professor Rena Mendelson. “If the lunch is going to sit around for four hours and not be refrigerated, think about how to pack it.”

Use ice packs, or freeze juice boxes or send frozen foods that will thaw in time for lunch, while also keeping the temperature down in lunch bags. Insulated containers are also a good choice to keep foods hot or cold.

Nutritionist Lianne Phillipson-Webb is careful in what she sends for her daughters, and while leftovers are fine, she wouldn’t encourage a meal that has shrimp or anything else that can go bad quickly.

Also make children aware of food safety; “Kids need to know if they didn't finish that tuna sandwich, by 3 p.m., it's not safe to eat,” adds Mendelson.

Keep it clean: The added bonus of litterless lunches is that reusable containers make it easy to keep everything clean. A popular choice is neoprene lunch bags, which can be rinsed out quickly or thrown in the wash.

Goodbyn is a lunch box that can go straight in the dishwasher. Reusable containers, cutlery and insulated containers also go in the dishwasher.

Keep it safe: With about 7 per cent of the population reporting a food allergy, what’s allowed and what’s not is important to keep in mind given that some options can be fatal.

All schools are nut-free, but sometimes parents forget and send kids with spreads like Nutella or granola bars that contain nuts. While not everything that comes in the lunch bag has to be produced in a nut-free facility, it must be free of nuts.

Phillipson-Webb will sometimes use tahini or pumpkin seed spreads, but first checked with her daughters’ school to make sure they it was safe to use such products.

Keep it healthy: Award-winning chef James Smith says its important to look at school lunches from a nutritional point of view as well as a “just tastes good” one. (In the U.S., it’s estimated about half of kids bring chips for lunch.) One of the programs he runs at George Brown College “tries to bridge that gap a bit.” He stresses the importance of whole grains, a balance of fruits, vegetables and protein, as well as portion control.

His suggestions? Rather than sending whole fruit (“kids take two bites out of apple and stop eating it”), cut it up and send in a container; a little lemon juice will keep apples from going brown. Choose fruit over fruit juices.

He recommends simple salads, fruit salads, Greek yogurt with fruit for dipping and, for energy, likes vegetable proteins such as beans and quinoa.

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